Montreal, Mohawk territory?
Earlier this week QMI’s Joseph Facal wrote a piece bluntly titled Montréal n’a jamais été un territoire mohawk which I saw but didn’t link, seeing it was just more QMI provocation. Now Radio-Canada looks at the Mohawk side of the story.
Jack 09:53 on 2021-01-30 Permalink
If you want to see how intellectually incurious Joseph Facal is check out his list of must reads for “understanding” Quebec. It’s the conservative nationalist canon. I wonder if he reads them to Sophie and Richard. https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/12/24/10livres-pour-comprendre-le-quebec-actuel
GC 10:20 on 2021-01-30 Permalink
The fact that MBC is one of the authors on that list is probably all I need to know.
Poutine Pundit 13:22 on 2021-01-30 Permalink
That Radio Canada piece also gets some credible historians to look at the other side of the story, which is complicated. It’s a debate between oral history vs. written sources, and politics plays out on both sides.
JaneyB 14:31 on 2021-01-30 Permalink
Breathtaking idiocy. Next we will be hearing that Quebecois go so far back that they coexisted with the dinosaurs. I just do not know what to do with this level of ignorance…sigh.
DeWolf 14:32 on 2021-01-30 Permalink
When conservative nationalists argue that Montreal was never Mohawk territory, they’re only partially concerned about the Mohawks themselves. Mainly they’re trying to write the narrative that the St. Lawrence Valley was uninhabited, that the Iroquoians that Jacques Cartier had simply disappeared and therefore the land was ripe for the picking. It’s erasure.
I think one of the most egregious examples of this was on r/Quebec when some amateur historian was arguing that the Mohawks originally came from New York (you know, that ancient political jurisdiction that has existed for thousands of years) and were therefore foreigners – and even worse, they had allied with the British and were therefore conquerors. (The same person argued that the Huron-Wendat were good natives because they were friendly with French colonists.) It’s the kind of argument I would have expected from the 19th century, not the 21st.
david225 19:51 on 2021-01-30 Permalink
We don’t really know if the specific area of Montreal had permanent Mohawk settlements, but the bigger point is: why does this guy give a shit?
If I were one of these Quebec nationalist historians, and I felt the need to say anything at all (which would be extraordinary), I’d be explaining that the Mohawks were conquered, as the Quebecois later were, not that the historical record is patchy, and so it may well have been terra nullius. The French defeated their enemies in battle and claimed the land! If you’re going to talk about the past, own it!
qatzelok 10:13 on 2021-01-31 Permalink
For many anglos, the First Nations are just another wedge issue to use “against” non-anglos.
Kate 10:44 on 2021-01-31 Permalink
DeWolf, you encapsulate the situation well.
Terra nullius is a strange concept. No, the people who lived here before 1492 didn’t have a European-style system of land ownership. That doesn’t mean the land belonged to nobody. It meant the land belonged to everybody. This isn’t to say that all indigenous people were noble idealists – there’s evidence of clashes over access to some of the better territory – but there wasn’t anything like a system of allodial title.
qatzelok, for conservative nationalists, the First Nations are a pawn in an argument “proving” that only the French have a right to Quebec.
qatzelok 11:37 on 2021-01-31 Permalink
“for conservative nationalists…”
Strawman of the week? I’ve never heard “only the French have a right to Québec” from anyone who is officially in this category. Of course, one can always find some crazy with this opinion somewhere out there. But to smear all nationalists with this statement is more wedge-issue-aggression.
Ant6n 14:13 on 2021-01-31 Permalink
Why defend conservative nationalists? I thought you were a proper lefty.
Shouldn’t you be comparing the whole „Montreal was empty“ idea with the „Palestine was empty“ idea of zionists?